Life Without Open Source Software

It’s funny when we think about open source software, most of us don’t really consider much beyond open office, desktop/web server Linux, perhaps even GIMP. Outside of this, most people don’t place much importance on it. To this vision, one article takes a minute to explore what life might be like had open source simply vanished of the face of the Earth one day.

I know, it sounds a bit B movie in its origin, but the fact is some interesting points were indeed brought up regardless. Well let’s take this one step at a time. The stock exchange here in the States, many functions of the U.S. military, anything touched by BSD (iPad, iPhone, Apple-anything), WordPress, amongst countless other things that we use yet don’t realize what is powering them would simply stop and cease to exist.

Worse is where there is a direct connect with Linux thin clients connecting to Windows servers. Sorry, now you’re looking to an alternative as that is not available. Clearly Linux, open source software and the ways it connects to us goes much deeper than with platform you prefer on the desktop or whether you like MS Office or Open Office. If you ask me, I think that living in a world with both open source and proprietary software keeps the other side, active developing and providing us with the best experience possible.